SC agrees to examine plea on 'wrong' questions in UPSC prelims

The Supreme Court today agreed to examine a plea which has alleged that two questions in the 2017 preliminary examination of the prestigious Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) were "wrong".
A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra, asked the petitioner, who was arguing the matter in-person, to serve a copy of the plea to the Centre's counsel and fixed it for hearing on August 1.
However, when the petitioner asked the bench, also comprising Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar, as to what will happen if the results of the UPSC prelims exam, 2017 is declared by August 1, the court said, "Do you think we will stay the result? We will see what is to be done".

UPSC aspirant Ashita Chawla, who has filed the petition, claimed before the apex court that a "couple of questions" in the UPSC preliminary examination were "wrong".
"There are rules for determining whether the questions are wrong? The result is yet to be declared. It (result) will come out any day," she told the bench.
The bench observed that her plea cannot be treated as a public interest litigation (PIL) as she had only put forth her grievance in personal capacity.

The UPSC had conducted the civil service preliminary exam 2017 on June 18. The preliminary examination consisted of two papers having objective type questions and they carried a maximum of 400 marks.

The petitoner has claimed that this year's preliminary examination paper had questions with multiple answers and many of them could have been answered on the subjective interpretation of the examinees.
She has also referred to earlier judgements of the apex court which had said that a question having two or more corrects answers should be considered as incorrect.